


evensong

by ceraunos



Series: old guard prompts [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Catharsis, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Halloween, M/M, Nile Freeman Needs a Hug, Post-Canon, nicky is a good egg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26953390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceraunos/pseuds/ceraunos
Summary: Nicky is holding out a thick envelope with her name on the front in cursive just the wrong side of illegible.‘We were going to wait,’ Nicky says, ‘but perhaps now is better.’When she opens it the first thing that slips out is a photo of her Mom.
Series: old guard prompts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1963957
Comments: 15
Kudos: 103





	evensong

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt 'any of the old guard and Nile: squishing cheeks'

She feels it creeping up on her with the shortening of the evenings and the burnt amber of the trees – which turn just a little faster on this continent than she’s used to. Halloween beckons with discount candy and costumes in every shop window and without even realising it she starts counting.

She remembers the third year afterwards she’d refused to look at a calendar from the first sign of fall, tried to lose the date entirely. There have been moments through the last year when the call to home has felt like a hollow gaping in her chest, like a bullet tearing through her, fractured and messy. Now, though, it’s as if a spool of something vital from her has spun out just out of sight, a memory unwound just out of reach.

She considers writing to Booker, but what would she say? How do you cope? _You don’t._ How can you live carrying the same grief for an eternity? _You can’t._

They’re back in England two days before the anniversary, doing slow surveillance on some MP suspected of funding a trafficking ring; they’re bored and frustrated and when Andy snaps at Joe for the hundredth time about not needing to be babysat, Nile feels something in her blood run over, hurt and terrible. She doesn’t think anyone notices her leave.

It’s almost dark before she realises she doesn’t know where she is anymore, her feet having taken her down street after street until she’s sure she’s crossed half the city. There’s a churchyard and a bench, and she nods at the homeless man cradling a can perched on the wall. Through the wall she can feel the low rumble of an organ, the faint wash of familiar evensong.

She’d been deployed for three years, during which she’d written three letters to her mom, lit three candles on a tent floor and known, an ocean away, the same prayers were being said by familiar lips. Now she thinks of the birthday, easter, anniversary cards unsent in a shoebox under a bed and can’t bear to add another.

Nicky slips onto the bench next to her and she knows it’s him without turning to look. He’s close enough she can smell the faint traces of Joe’s aftershave still clinging to him. They sit in silence for a long while before Nicky presses a hand to her arm and says,

‘Your father?’

The man on the wall finishes his can and hops down, waving to them as he heads out into the street.

‘Yes. No. Sort of,’ Nile answers, and her voice only cracks a little.

When she turns her head, Nicky is holding out a thick envelope with her name on the front in cursive just the wrong side of illegible.

‘We were going to wait,’ Nicky says, ‘but perhaps now is better.’

When she opens it the first thing that slips out is a photo of her Mom, younger than she ever remembers her and hugely pregnant. The second is of her, fifteen and smiling with a mouth full of hot-pink braces. The third is of her dad, standing alone in his dress uniform. It’s the photo that’s been on the mantle in her living room for as long as she’s known. It blurs when she blinks, and she realises belatedly that Nicky has reached over to wipe a smear of wetness off the corner.

‘Nile?’ Nicky says, so softly she hardly hears him.

‘I- how?’ She breaths.

‘They aren’t the originals, don’t worry.’

‘Won’t Andy say we can’t have things like this. For traceability and that shit.’

Nicky shakes his head. ‘We all have some things, from before; so should you.’

‘But –’

‘It was her idea.’ 

He pauses a moment before continuing and even the set of his jaw seems pained. ‘We couldn’t be there for Booker, like he needed. But it doesn’t mean it has to be the same again.’

Nile takes the hand that’s still on her arm and squeezes it, holding on.

‘Thank you. It means a lot.’

Nicky nods, and Nile thinks about the warmth of him pressed against her side, of how she recognised him without needing to look, of how familiar it feels already.

‘I’m ok with it, with Dad,’ she says after a moment. ‘It just feels… different this time, y’know?’

‘Like you’re already grieving for everyone else, too.’

A small hurt noise bubbles up at the back of Nile’s throat, because Nicky’s right; this all feels like a horrible preview of what’s still to come, and there’s nothing she can do about it.

‘How do I live with it?’ She whispers.

‘I don’t know,’ Nicky says. ‘But we’ll be here.’

The envelope slips off her knee when she twists into Nicky’s shoulder, fragments of her life scattering across damp paving slabs.

She feels Nicky shift to grab one as a breeze blows past them; later they’ll have to hunt down the rest from behind tombstones. Now, though, Nicky laughs into her hair and when she looks up she sees herself, two years old and dressed as a pumpkin. With one hand she’s clinging to her mom, in the other is a bar of candy almost as big as she is.

‘Una bellissima bambina,’ Nicky marvels, and catches Nile off guard when he pinches her cheek as if she’s still the sticky, squishy child in the photo. She supposes, in some way, some part of her still is.

When she laughs back it’s unexpected and a little wet around the edges but it feels _real_ and warm and Nicky’s hand is soft still in hers.

~

(Two days later, Joe knocks on her door with a cup of tea and a suspicious, orange lump and Nile swears at Nicky under her breath. She gets her own back when he almost dies laughing when she wears the knitted pumpkin hat to dinner that night, though.)

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr [here](https://ceraunos.tumblr.com/) \- my inbox is currently open to prompts x 
> 
> kudos/comments are very much loved. 
> 
> italian translation: una bellissimo bambina = a beautiful little girl


End file.
